12 Killer Ways that Firms Squeeze Every Drop of Value from Their Blog

Accounting, Consulting and other Professional Services Firms Need to Get More Mileage from Blogging

If the marketing and management team of your CPA, consulting or law firms aren’t familiar with blogging and content marketing in general, you may be missing the boat on opportunities for branding and lead generation. But this post isn’t about the value of blogging (see our whitepaper offer, below), it’s about getting as much mileage out of your blogging efforts as possible.

Kudos to those of you who are devoting the time, energy and resources to blogging, and we hope that you’re employing best practices to integrate blogging activities into your overall marketing mix. Blogging doesn’t have to be a “one and done” effort. There are ways to leverage that effort and squeeze every possible bit of value out of it for a maximum ROI.

So, here’s a list of 12 killer ideas to help your firm get more mileage out of blogging:

• Put in a link to the author’s bio on every blog post, and tag the post with the author’s name - this builds authority for personal branding purposes, delivers SEO value, and extends a friendly invitation to keep a visitor on your website longer.
• Put a call to action on each the bio page of each author inviting visitors to “Read My Blog Posts” – this CTA gets linked to the author’s blog tag, which in turn will serve up all of blog posts of that partner or subject matter expert when clicked …. great for personal branding!
• In each post, put in links bringing the reader to the relevant Services pages of your website, and tag the post with the name of the service – this is terrific for corporate branding, is critical for SEO purposes, and keeps readers engaged on your site.
• Put a call to action on each Services page on your website inviting visitors to “Read Our Blog Posts About XXXXXX” – this CTA gets linked to a relevant tag which when clicked, serves up all of the posts related to that service.
• Using an e-newsletter as part of your marketing? Promote the availability of a new post in your newsletter with a headline and a link back to that post to catch those eyeballs that aren’t blog subscribers. This gives your newsletter more value because it will then deliver more content, and  more opportunities for brand building and lead generation.
• Promote a new blog post on your LinkedIn profile and within relevant LinkedIn groups – this will hopefully drive people to your website and stimulate conversations and discussions. Using this tactic, one of our posts on content marketing for reluctant rainmakers generated hundreds of reader, dozens of comments, and a significant number of requests (i.e. leads) for our whitepaper on content marketing.
• Aggregate your blog posts on a given topic, subject or issue, and use them as an appendix in your proposal – looking for differentiation? You can’t do better than to leverage your blog posts into a thought leadership showcase.
• Aggregate your blog posts on a given topic, subject or issue, and use them to create a whitepaper that can be the centerpiece of an offer for lead generation purposes – if you’ve written a number of times on a given subject, then you can probably weave that effort into a larger piece of content that can be tucked behind a firm for lead gen purposes.
• Aggregate your blog posts on a given topic, subject or issue, publish them in hard copy format, and use them as a giveaway after a presentation or at a trade show. If you seek to do more corporate or personal branding, this is a way to showcase your thought leadership without making someone fill out a form.
• Take snippets from your blog and use them as tweets – make sure you have a link back to the blog post, but this is a terrific way to squeeze more mileage out of what you’ve done for a minimal amount of additional effort, with a huge benefit in terms of getting found, getting shared, building brands, and setting the stage for lead gen.
• Use your blog to build a community of fans and followers – by putting social share buttons and subscription options on your blog, you’ll be setting the stage for building your social network. In many blogging platforms, this is a set it an forget function, so  one blog post has the  potential to deliver a huge upside value if it gets some buzz and starts to get shared.

I saved the best killer idea for squeezing more value out of your blogging for last – blogs should be used for lead generation. Embed calls to action for other pieces of thought leadership. The grand payoff for the investment you’ve made in your form’s blog is lead generation … that’s why it’s at the heart of inbound marketing.

Blogging is a marathon, not a sprint. Consistency and persistence get rewarded in the form of higher search engine rankings, more traffic and, ultimately, greater lead generation. Have faith and patience.